Apple Music now boasts more than 10m paying subscribers.
The Spotify rival only launched just under seven months ago, on June 30 last year.
Those who signed up received a three-month free trial to the service – taking early adopters up to September 30 – before being asked to pay $9.99/£9.99/€9.99 per month.
News of AM’s 10m subscribers has been confirmed in the Financial Times, although there has been no confirmation of how many of this number are active on the platform.
Labels received their first ‘paid-for’ Apple Music royalty cheques (for October 2015) last month.
One independent record company told MBW last week: “It was double the amount of money we were expecting,” although they added that income from China was a disappointment. (Apple Music only launched in the market in September.)
“Our first ‘subscription’ apple music cheque arrived in December. IT was double the amount of money we were expecting.”
Independent label
In contrast, Spotify – which launched as a Swedish startup in 2008 – took six years to reach 10m paying subs, in May 2014.
The last time Spotify confirmed its customer numbers was in June last year, when it surpassed 75m total active users and 20m paying customers.
Apple announced that it had kept hold of 6.5m paying customers in October last year – meaning that figure has now grown 54% in three months.
Just for fun: if Apple’s Oct-Jan (6.5m-10m) rate of growth was to continue, it would be on course to attract 14m subscribers per annum.
If it can keep up that trajectory, it would reach 100m paying customers in just over six years.
11m people signed up to Apple Music’s free trial in its opening two months.
“It’s good news that Apple is making streaming work but it is also going to accelerate the decline of downloads,” Mark Mulligan, music industry analyst, told the FT, predicting that Apple’s current growth rate meant that it had “the potential to be the leading music subscription service sometime in 2017”.
Apple Music scored a world exclusive deal for the official concert video of Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour in December.
At the end of 2014, according to the IFPI, 41m people in total were paying for an audio music streaming service globally.Music Business Worldwide
